Understanding how to
profit from your
referral marketing
system is the
greatest
free referrals
practice building
secret any doctor
will ever discover.

Take one easy step
and you will never
go back. Just
realizing that
nearly 100% of your
medical practice is
referral based
should be a clue to
your need to focus
on ways to
capitalize on this
free referral
process advantages.
Your medical
patients arrive at
you door either by
referring themselves
or by others who
refer them.

Various studies have
revealed that about
40% of your patients
are
self-referred.
The other 60% are
doctor referred
(Target Marketing Mag. April 2012).
Immediately, you can
see the advantage of
catering to doctors
who refer patients
to your practice, to
you.

The process of
recruiting a
continual stream of
new (sometimes old
patients) patients
from other doctors
who predictably can
become a resource
for referring their
patients to you is
called “referral
marketing.” Referral
marketing is a very
profitable process
if it’s done right.
There are certain
fragments of the
process, when they
are lined up
properly, that
require an
organizational
structure, a plan
that enables a
medical professional
to efficiently
continue to build
their medical
practice.

You create a
“system” that works
for you and is
unique to your
medical practice.
This article is all
about how to do that
and make it work.
Free referrals to
your medical
practice is a
blessing you can’t
afford to pass up.

The tide of any
medical practice
sustainability is a
function of bringing
in more new patients
than you are losing
from your practice.
The problem with
that is most doctors
in private practice
don’t keep records
or have a way of
measuring the
monthly gain or loss
of patients.

Consequently, they
never know whether their practice is
growing or
disintegrating. It’s
so slow of a change
that it goes on
rarely noticed. When
you make the effort
to create a referral
marketing system,
you will quickly
know how your
practice is
doing… the first
big advantage of a
referral system.

If you
don’t
already
have a
system
in place
to know
which
doctors
have sent
you a
patient
over the
last
year… set
one up
today! It
has to be
recorded
whenever a
referral
patient
from
anywhere
contacts
your
office... even
the ones
that never
pan out,
never show
up for
their
appointment,
never
reschedule.

Your
office
staff
members
must all
be made
aware of
the
importance
of this
endeavor,
and
repeatedly
reminded
of it.
These
contacts
should be
recorded
in one
place
only,
preferably
a front
desk
journal,
not loose
slips of
paper kept
in a
folder
somewhere.

The
information
recorded
should
include
the date
of
contact,
name of
person
your
staffer
spoke to
and who
they are,
the name
of the
patient
being
referred
and their
contact
information,
name of
the doctor
referring
the
patient,
and reason
for the
referral
(medical
problem).

2.
Define
what kind
of medical
issues
those
patients
are most
commonly
referred
to you
for

When you
investigate
the list
of
referred
patient’s
medical
problems,
you will
be aware
of what
other
doctors in
your
community
consider
you an
expert at
diagnosing
and
treating.
The list
of medical
problems
also
reflects
other
doctor’s
perceptions
of what
you do
best.

It
may be
that you
are good
at other
medical
skills
that they
don’t know
about yet
and is
your job
to make
that clear
to them
during the
marketing
contacts
you make
with them.

A doctor
associate
of mine,
who
unconsciously
left other
doctors
with the
perception
that he
preferred
not to do
gyn major
surgery
cases,
revealed
to our
practice
group that
he had
done only
one
hysterectomy
in the
past year,
but had
done more
OB
deliveries
than any
of us had.

He didn’t
know that
local
doctors
perceived
that about
him, nor,
if he did,
he would
not have
known how
to correct
the misconception... nor
would have
I in
those
times.

3.
Putting the word out that you love
to work with referred patients

Local doctors don’t know
what you desire, unless you
tell them. The fact that you accept referred patients, contrary
to public opinion, does not indicate to others
that your
practice is
suffering (a common embarrassing belief among
doctors), but rather to the
fact that you are building
your practice.

A polite introductory short
letter (not email) to the
doctors
in your community
helps to increase referrals. Describe
your reasoning for sending the letter to them, meanwhile
being humble, honest, and transparent. Assuming that all
the local doctors know
what you like to do in your practice
is a masochistic mistake.

4. Segment your
lists of physician
referrals.

Make
two lists to start
with. Expand those
to more focused
doctor referral
lists after you know the doctors who refer
the most patients. The first list should be
the doctors who
already refer patients to you. The second
list you need is a
list of those
doctors who
potentially might be good to
approach about sending you referral patients.

The medical
community grapevine usually reveals which
doctors refer patients commonly,
and to whom they send
them. Later on you can market more to the doctors
that
send you
occasional patients (a sub-list of doctors) as
apposed to ones who send you
lots of patients.

Never neglect those
doctors that
constantly send you
patients… treat them even better than your
own mother.

How to create a referral
marketing system for
using this
information...

1. Design a step-by-step
protocol that your office
staff members must follow
when every referral patient
contact occurs...

The
protocol should
include such items
as...

·What the new patient
should be told about
the
referral visit on the phone, and
how you want the
process handled.

·Set of
responses to
questions the
referred patient
will most likely
ask.

·Options for
appointment
scheduling. When you
want to see those
patients, length of
appt., etc.

·Emphasis on seeing
them as soon as
possible and your
special interest in
solving their
medical problem.

2.
Construct a protocol to be
followed by your office
staff during the patient’s
first appointment in your
office...

It should include
the following...

Exaggerated efforts at
hospitality by all members
of the office staff

Minimal waiting time in
the reception area

Patient should be
inconspicuously moved ahead
to an exam room ahead of other
waiting patients

Explanation to the
patient the sequence
of events that will
happen—like put on
exam gown before the
doctor enters,
re-dress and be
moved to the
consultation private
office or room,
findings, treatment
options, and
decisions to be
discussed in the
private environment,
etc.

Possible second or
third follow-up
visit and for what
reasons... all explained to
the patient

How and when the
doctor’s findings
and treatment (if
any) will be sent
back to her or his own
doctor

Tell what the
patient should do
next, or what should
happen next in the process

Give a time-line for
the results of tests
and treatments to be completed

Need for any further
consultations, if
any, you believe may be advisable

3.
Compose a protocol
for your office
members to follow
for the follow-up
visits, if anyShould include such
things as...

If the patient does not call back for a second
follow-up visit by _____time frame, do______.

Ways to be sure the referral doctor actually got
your findings and
written
report

Ways to be sure the patient completed the tests
you may
have
ordered

Ways to be sure all results of tests ordered have
been done and you
have
seen the
reports

Ways to be sure the patient is informed of
the test
results

These are the basics
of an office
referral system
management of a
patient who has been
sent to you on
referral. Once you
have a fixed
system in place
to manage this part
of the referral
system with the
patient, speed and
efficiency are
possible, and
confusion in your
office
is eliminated.

It reflects on your
better than average
ability to manage
medical problems
without mistakes,
delays,
forgetfulness, or
incompetence. Your
credibility is
vastly increased
and substantiated.

(The follow-up
article next month
will continue with
and complete this
topic to how you
should effectively
manage referral
doctors, and how to
market to them in a
way that they will
gladly refer
patients to you once
they understand what
you will do for them
and
their patients.)

Article #32A

ARTICLE---DAN
KENNEDY

Why People Fail

A series of No B.S. Articles from Dan Kennedy

"Now Is The Time To Do It Differently"

“Help!
– I Can’t Get Out Of The Box I Put
Myself In!”

The fast food industry got the idea for drive-in
windows from banks. I guess there was a
McDonalds executive sitting at the bank drive-through
one day who thought, “I don’t
think we can fit the
milkshakes in these tubes, but…
”Netjets", the
leader in fractional
jet ownership, now owned by
Warren Buffet, owes its birth to the vacation
time-share industry.

The microwave in your kitchen was
not originally intended to go there; its original
manufacturer, Litton, believed no consumer would buy
it and built them only for restaurants. When was the
last time you heard of Litton? What does this tell
you? That successful businesses live or die by
cross-industry ‘borrowing’ of ideas, that inspiration
more often comes from outside the box than from
within. Ordinary businesses stay ordinary, their
owners eking out only ordinary incomes – and working
too hard for them – as long as those owners foolishly
and stubbornly, mentally stay
in their
own tiny
backyard.

Breakthroughs come from bringing fresh ideas
found outside one’s own business in and applying them
in new ways. You choose to limit or expand
your income by the way you reject or embrace ideas
found far afield from your present modus operandi
and
industry norms.

The vast majority of ordinary businesspeople with
ordinary incomes and never-ending ordinary complaints
about how hard they work but how little they gain,
about being unable to compete with the bigger and
cheaper…have this in common: they get their hands on
powerful information like that in this very
publication and waste their time and energy in the non-creative activity
of finding all the ways it
can’t and
doesn’t
apply to them.

Some
people have such teeny, tiny, calcified, crippled
imaginations they can only appreciate an example
precisely matched to them – oh, that won’t work for
me because her place sells pizza and I sell Chinese
food, and hers is in a medium sized city and I’m in a
small town, and it rains a lot where she is but it’s
sunny here; you have to show me an example from a
Chinese restaurant in a small town where it’s hot and
dry. Fools stay stuck in the very limiting “But My
Business Is Different” box, thereby negating the
value
of 99% of every successful strategy, example, model
they see or
are presented with.

My client list is, fortunately, chock full of people
who think in very opposite ways. They get rich by
finding the non-obvious opportunities. Living
creatively. Adapting tried-and-true winning strategies
from somewhere
else to where they are. They attack
each issue of my newsletter, each
book I suggest to
them, with yellow hi-liter and bias for action,
not
closed mind.

They are willing, even eager to
“re-imagine” their businesses while others have Bilbo
Baggins’ (The Hobbit) attitude: not interested in adventures – they make
you late for dinner. Space
here does not permit telling you such client stories,
but I’d invite you to get a peek, viewing the
half-hour TV show at
www.In12Months.com, free of charge.

One of the most successful marketing strategies of
all time is called ‘gift with appointment.’ Today, it
brings new patients into dentists’ offices, affluent
investors to financial advisors’ seminars, new home
buyers to developments and resort communities, and is
in play in hundreds of fields, helping to create
millions of sales appointments
every week.

To the best
of my knowledge, it came from a woman named Estee
Lauder. I wonder how many people from how many
different fields ignored it for how long, because:
“Nothing having to do with selling lipsticks and
perfumes could possibly apply to MY business. MY
business
is
different.

The WHY PEOPLE FAIL articles are provided by Dan S.
Kennedy, serial entrepreneur, from-scratch
multi-millionaire, speaker, consultant, coach, author
of 13 books including the No B.S. series (
www.NoBSBooks.com),
and editor of The No B.S. Marketing Letter. WE HAVE
ARRANGED A SPECIAL FREE GIFT FROM DAN FOR YOU
including a 2-Month Free Membership in Glazer-Kennedy
Insider’s Circle, newsletters, audio CDs and more: for
information and
to register, visit: